A documentation and review of limited time, special edition, or otherwise hard-to-find noms.

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Pop-Tarts Wildlicious Frosted Wild! Fruit Fusion

Note: This product was originally reviewed as an ephemeral nom, but as of 8/14/2013, it appears to be permanent.

Pop-Tarts has had their Wildlicious line out for a while now, but I don't think they're destined for greatness. Their flavors are a bit wacky and their package designs don't scream "market stability" to me.

The packaging itself is one of the craziest I've ever seen, with its eye-catching blue and orange schema that seems like it's meant to mesmerize young children in the cereal aisle to scream for their parents to buy it. When unsheathed, the pastry's craziness continues with bright orange frosting (with additional red frosting drizzles) and also what Pop-Tarts is calling "sprinkles" but is really more like flecks of colored rock candy. Geez. The aesthetic of this product so far is exhausting.

Oddly enough, the flavor of this visually and nomenclaturally complicated food is anything but. While the marketing would have you believe that it would taste like a cornucopia explosion of myriad fruits, it is instead quite tame, and dare I say refined. To my surprise, the dominant flavors in the filling are the very ones pictured on the box's front: strawberry, cherry, and orange. The snack tastes mostly like the original Strawberry Pop-Tarts, but clearly cherry has been mixed in as well. The most surprising and pleasant addition to this mix is the slightest bit of orange whose tartness balances the sweetness in a way that makes this superior to most fruity Pop-Tarts I've ever had. While its website would have me believe that the filling also contains raspberry and blueberry, and its ingredients list would suggest apple, the only other flavor I can pick up is perhaps the smallest hint of banana.

This flavor is superior and elevated compared to almost any other fruity Pop-Tarts product because of the balancing addition of tartness, but it's not quite enough to get it over the 2-NOM plateau.